Tag Archives: self development

I find myself here, part of an unimaginably complex and beyond extraordinarily beautiful natural world which is slowly being annihilated by our ignorant society – proudly led by amoral, unethical and profit-driven individuals whose thirst for more conquest, domination and power seems to be insatiable. I find myself here, part of it all, powerless to change something significant to make a difference at a large scale, but nevertheless empowered to change myself, and to positively make a difference with what I’m capable of thinking/doing. Despite the odds against me (of which I’m perfectly aware of), I feel empowered to contribute in making a positive difference at a large scale by acting ethically at my small scale. I want to create and inspire ethical change and the first step in the right direction I think is in recognising the here, recognising the illusionary construct we’re living in. Neil Kramer’s video describes very well the boundaries and methodologies used in this illusionary construct to keep us here in it. Therefore given the gravity of the global risks I came across, I will instead focus on the paramount and immediate necessity for self-awareness, critical thinking and adaptability. Adaptability is the quality of being able to change (or be changed) in order to deal successfully with new situations. And this capacity for adaptability is within our control – but in order to consciously adapt (i.e. not to be changed without our own will), we need self-awareness. While this post will detail my work on global risks, it is dedicated to self-awareness for reasons which are completely obvious from the gravity of the threats to us uncovered by my research. For now lets start with the importance of self-awareness (or lack of it):

The Four Horsemen of Self-Awareness: Directionlessness, Detachment, Disassociation, Distraction.

Heraclitus wrote 2500 ago that “The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change”. While his statement holds true until today, and will most definitely continue to be true in the future, those of us who want to stay conscious and self-aware, need to take heed to his wise words and let go of our fear of change. IF we want to become self-aware, to adapt and make a positive difference, we need to be able to deal with fear of change. Otherwise we can continue embracing Brendon’s 4 horsemen of self-awareness as described in the video above and hope for the best.. However, if we choose to make a positive difference, we need to understand that our fear (of the change we don’t control), manipulates us into wanting the illusion to keep things the same, regardless of how bad they really are. And as you will find out from my personal research presented here, the real reality is much worse than the fragmented one presented in mass media and various other for-profit sources. For the record, nobody asked me to do this and I didn’t ask or received anything in return for the resources I spent on compiling this research. The only reason why I’ve done it and now I’m sharing it publicly, is because I believe that if we don’t take positive action and things do continue to stay on the same course, it will most probably be the end of our humanity. How I’ve reached this improbable conclusion can be deducted from my research. However, probability aside, I’m absolutely sure of one thing: the choice is ours on how we decide to use our most valuable resource to continue to stay ignorant/fearful, or to act ethically and make a positive difference.

But do we know what is the most valuable resource in our possession? Do we know what is the most valuable resource on this planet and maybe even in this multiverse (to the best of our knowledge)? Do we realise what is the absolute most important resource in our lives? Take a moment to think about the answer and before you read further, feel free to write down at least 3 potential answers to these questions…OK, so have you written down 3 answers to those questions? If the answer is yes, then lets move on. To give you a clue, the answer is the same resource, and this one most important resource can’t be created, or mined, minted, traded or bought. I’m about to give you the answer I learned to be the most valuable resource in our lives, but before you read it, please draw a vertical line after your own 3 answers and write my answer on the other side of your line, so you can compare your answers with mine: time. The individual time we all have while we are alive is the most valuable resource we have available during our spark of life here. Our time alive is our most valuable resource and implicitly is also humanity’s most valuable resource. But here is the catch: we don’t really realise that do we? We, the individual humans living together on this space rock, we don’t get that. We don’t individually have the self-awareness to collectively understand that our time is our most valuable resource, nor do we realise that we are living heretogether. And here is were it got us:

Our lack of self-awareness brought us here. It wasn’t just the emperors and their armies, or the religious fanatics and their terrors; or the ‘royal’ blooded families and their wealth, or the industrialists and their technology, or the for-profit corporations, or the deceitful politicians and their never-ending lies, or any other label-carrying entity or faction. No, it wasn’t just ‘them’. They are indeed the creators of this very mad world we’re living in, but they couldn’t haven done it without the rest of us. All of us. And for as long as we continue to lack self-awareness (in time and space), it will always be so because each one of us, individually, is responsible for the world we are living in every day. Thus I hope everybody can realise that regardless of the risks and challenges presented to you, change always starts within.

Now onto global threats. In November 2014 I randomly came across a piece of information which encouraged me to pursue my curiosity on a new and interesting path. I followed my curiosity down the proverbial rabbit hole and +500 hours of research later, I ended up with a large mind map containing a very large number of threats to our: mental health, emotional health, physical health and potentially spiritual healthtoo. (I wrote “potentially” because I have no way to measure it objectively, but subjectively I sense it being influenced too).

However, a few minutes ago I realised that if I continue writing the global threats details in this post, it will turn out to be a very long read which may take away some value from the core point – taking ethical actions to mitigate mostly man-made global threats affecting us at species level and at a personal level. Therefore I decided to split the post in 2 parts and provide the core details on global threats in the 2nd part. If now I’m too tired to make sense of it and it turns out to be incoherent, I apologise and I promise I will re-edit both posts after they’re published. Also this is my first draft and feedback is most welcome as always.

PS: There is a lot more info in this post about self-awareness and critical thinking than meets the eye at first glance. If interested in finding out more, feel free to click on the highlighted words as they are hyperlinks to various supporting resources and inspiring videos like: